Few contemporary artists can demonstrate an oeuvre as varied consistent and influential as
that of Jim Dine-incorporating painting drawing printmaking sculpture and photography and
sweeping across more than six decades. Fewer still can say they are respected poets. Dine has
been writing and performing intensely autobiographical poems since the late 1960s and With
Fragile Spirit is his latest collection consisting of five volumes. These differ greatly and
include "A Beautiful Day " exploring Dine's polarities of experience from delight to melancholy
from disillusion to celebration and "Like the Big Boy Tomato " a hand-written version of his
2021 hate poem "Electrolyte in Blue " probing themes of anti-Semitism racism climate change
and failed world leaders. Together these books affirm poetry as the unceasing critical flow
that augments and energizes his visual work.
